It’s not easy to collaborate, but it’s essential!
Bernadette Cullinane A C and Paul Harrison BA Deloitte Consulting Pty Ltd, Tower 2, Brookfield Place, 123 St Georges Tce, Perth WA 6000, Australia.
B Upstream Production Solutions, Level 5, 1101 Hay Street, Perth WA 6005.
C Corresponding author. Email: bernadettecullinane@deloitte.com.au
The APPEA Journal 57(2) 426-429 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ16207
Accepted: 11 April 2017 Published: 29 May 2017
Abstract
While emerging as a world leader in liquefied natural gas production, overall, Australia’s oil and gas industry is disadvantaged by the remoteness and geographical breadth of our operations, our limited infrastructure and insufficient economies of scale. These factors drive up the cost of production and make it difficult for both operators and service companies to balance the trade-offs between building scale and capability. Despite our rich resource base, these structural factors make it challenging for the Australian oil and gas industry to compete globally.
Additionally, traditional project development and contracting practices rely on bespoke, bi-lateral agreements between operators and service companies, resulting in inconsistencies and inefficiencies that limit the reuse of solutions and technology, driving costs even higher.
This has created an imperative for new collaborative industry platforms in areas of workforce competency management and integrated activity planning, which leverage standardised processes and common infrastructure.
This paper will explain how to overcome collaboration obstacles by cultivating a culture of transparency and will discuss the steps undertaken to develop trust within a diverse stakeholder group, enabling the creation of shared solutions. This paper gives concrete recommendations on how to create a new mindset around the appropriate company structure for the development of collaborative and innovative platforms that deliver more competitive outcomes to the Australian oil and gas industry.
Keywords: collaboration, industry competitiveness, LNG, oil and gas.
Bernadette Cullinane is currently the Australian National Oil and Gas Practice Leader and LNG Leader for Deloitte Consulting Pty Ltd. Throughout her career, Bernadette has helped companies improve their business, financial and operational performance. She has more than 25 years of experience across the oil and gas value chain and all stages of the capital project to operations lifecycle. |
Paul Harrison has over 30 years of international experience in the hydrocarbon, infrastructure and associated complex process industries. Paul successfully established and led company national and international operations, providing executive leadership to initiate and grow businesses whilst ensuring safe, secure and efficient operations. Paul directed key international operations and management and major project delivery contracts in the Asia Pacific upstream gas and LNG industry sectors, with a clear focus on delivering outstanding and sustainable business outcomes. Throughout his career, Paul has held board and executive leadership roles for Amec Foster Wheeler, WorleyParsons, Logicamms and TW-Services. |
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